Merkitys - Meaning

Mobile Phone + Flickr + Context = Meaning

When you take a photo you are capturing an image of what you can see with your eyes. Merkitys-Meaning enriches this image by automatically adding contextual information and allowing you to instantly share your picture; all with just one click. Simply put: Meaning is one click publishing from your phone to your Flickr account.

More information and the application can be found on the Merkitys-Meaning website.

Why would I want to add context to my images?

When we sort information we tend to bundle and group things arbitrarily, for one purpose we might group by size, for another we might group by date. Context added to media is about sorting and organising your photos. Adding contextual information is an excellent way to group together photos when combined with an online gallery service such as flickr. Want to find those pictures from Rome? No problem. Want to find those pictures when Mike was around? Again no problem.

The real benefit however comes from the social nature of a service such as Flickr. For example, you and some friends are at an event, just add a common keyword to all the photos you take and you can then later find them easily with flickr. Also this process can reveal related media from people with similar interests, for example people who live in your area or share a pass-time like train-spotting. Groups can be combined; so in this case you could find trainspotters in your area.

All of this is not really new. The thing that Merkitys-Meaning enables is the ability to do it all automatically, and to add user defined tags; all from from your phone.

Merkitys-Meaning can add the following contextual information:

• locational information
  • GPS (with additional Bluetooth GPS device)
  • GSM Cell info
  • Country
  • City
• The bluetooth environment
• Calendar events
• User defined tags
• User defined description